Memory Genius® Learning Series - The Theory of Education – Article #2

Throughout the history of the United States, there have been three approaches to education. We are all familiar with the informational approach, in which the instructor seeks to supply the students with as many facts and details as possible. The informational approach is great for preparing men and women to compete in television quiz shows, but it lacks an essential element, which will be discussed shortly.

The second approach to education is vocational. John Dewey, who is widely considered to be the father of our so-called "progressive education system," believed that the end of education is to prepare students for a vocation. Therefore, the school should not strive to fill students' minds, but rather to provide them with the skills they will need in the workplace. The vocational approach, then, prepares the hands, while the informational approach concentrates on preparing the mind.

The third approach to education was the one favored by our Founding Fathers, which is the philosophical approach. The Founders were not opposed to vocational training, for they believed that a job was God's calling on one's life. Nor did they wish to omit the transmission of important information, for they possessed a classical education that would make modern Americans envious. However, our Founders believed that one was not properly educated unless equipped with a philosophical foundation which would unify the mind and give meaning and significance to the individual facts and skills acquired through the course of informational and vocational education. In other words, they understood that the whole gives meaning to the parts.

A philosophical education provides an overarching framework of meaning, in which each particular is explained by a system of universal truths. Only systems are objects of knowledge. Isolated parts have no meaning, and therefore are not objects of knowledge, because parts are defined by wholes—the whole system gives meaning to the individual part. One would never attempt to assemble the pieces (parts) of a large jigsaw puzzle without the finished picture (the complete system) on the cover of the box. If there is no system to plug the part into, the part has no meaning or significance in its isolated state. An isolated part has no independent significance apart from a systemic context. Only context gives meaning to individual parts. The philosophical approach to education fosters a systemic, unified world-view. Whatever subject is being discussed—whether history, mathematics, literature, or science—the student understands where that particular item fits into the universal system of thought.

The Founders believed that being was more important than doing. Students who learned under the philosophical system of education focused on what kind of person they wanted to be before they determined what they wanted to do. Students learned about integrity long before they began to dream of entering the business world and making a lot of money. As difficult as it is to believe in today's world of electives and specialized education, when Harvard College opened in the 1640s, there was one curriculum for all students, regardless of the career that the individual student intended to pursue upon graduation. Harvard was by no means an exception to the rule. When the great universities were first formed, it was widely believed that graduates should possess a broad philosophical understanding that would prepare them to excel in any field of endeavor.

Students who are not taught systemically do not truly learn; they simply acquire an arbitrarily determined set of facts, figures, or skills that are not explained by a larger system of thought. The philosophical approach to learning advocated by our Founders is true learning. When one learns philosophically, each new learning experience adds to understanding and meaning, because the parts are always explained by wholes, and the student sees each new part in relationship to that whole. Then every learning experience is an "Aha!" moment, rather than a "Huh?" moment. A student is truly educated when he or she is able to rise above the foothills of the particulars (the individual facts, figures, and skills) and ascend to the philosophical view from the mountaintop, which is the unifying, universal principle.